my microcosm

Monthly Archives: August 2012

There’s nothing like a good adventure story! Pair that with a how-to manual and you’ve got gold. Robnoxious’ new book, Unsinkable: How to build Plywood Pontoons & Longtail Motor Boats Out of Scrap, is both the story of his trip down the Missouri River on a homemade boat and how to do so yourself! Here the author of Shut Up and Love the Rain, Awesome Future, and The Strange Voyage of the Leona Joyce brings a little slice of Huck Finn to 2012 as he and friends take to the Big Muddy in their unsinkable, ever-ready craft The Snowball. Watch as Rob and Co. encounter wild rednecks and Lord of the Flies-esque river islands, sublime sunsets and deathly storms. It’s an exciting rollercoaster of a ride but Rob’s front-of-book schematics make it seem totally possible for the lay person. Rob’s adventure story/DIY guide combo-punch brings a lot to the table and you’ll be carting this tome around ’til it andyou are waterlogged and sunbaked!

Have you ever wanted to make your own movies? In this easy-to-read and lavishly illustrated volume, you will learn why movies move; how film and video cameras work; how to light and expose your shots to get the best results; how to create eye-pleasing compositions; and how to record crystal clear sounds. It’s a do-it-yourself guidebook for film and video makers of all ages and experience levels.

Dan P. Moore’s first graphic novel Mark Twain Was Right charts the course of the 2001 Cincinnati Riots, the largest urban unrest (the first in the 21st century) since the 1992 LA Riots. Moore’s book is an engaging work of journalism—as-narrative-comic, tracing the riot’s genesis from the senseless police killing of a 19-year-old black man to the man’s funeral six days later. What results is a tumultuous cocktail of nonviolent civil disobedience, frustration-fueled looting, and further police violence. Interviews with people of varying perspectives—activists, community leaders, a looter, bystanders, etc—weave a tale of inner-city community coming together. Here we witness a city boiling over, and all the political grossness, interpersonal rallying, and rampant destruction that entails. At 96 pages, Mark Twain Was Right is an important chapter of American history, a story often overlooked and generally misreported, a piece of our lineage that must not be forgotten.

is an important chapter of American history, a story often overlooked and generally misreported, a piece of our lineage that must not be forgotten.